Pacification Diplomacy and Patience in Islam

This brief book is elegant and surprising. It opens with an essay by the incomparable El Fadl, an Islamic law professor at UCLA, about tolerance in Islamic theology and among Muslims. He effectively disposes of the terrorists' intolerant interpretations of Qur'anic passages by arguing that a more accurate interpretation would acknowledge the verses' historical contexts and note that they contradict other passages in the Qur'an that are both more tolerant and more central to Islamic practice. The book closes with a follow-up response by El Fadl, reflecting on the opinions of his co-authors. The overall effect of the three sections is quite unexpected; the reader becomes engaged in a dialogue with each writer, realizing with each essay the complexity of the problems facing modern Muslims. The major point that emerges is that while Islam is theologically tolerant of non-Muslims, individual Muslims themselves may harbor intolerant views that they unjustifiably read into the Qur'an, which El Fadl condemns as eisegesis.
To Islamic legal expert Abou El Fadl's argument that the Qur'an favors a conception of Islam as pacific and tolerant, especially when viewed with contemporary eyes rather than a gaze frozen in earlier times and circumstances, 11 well-qualified respondents reply with varying degrees of skepticism. One, a resident American academic like Abou El Fadl, says such liberal interpretation may be attractive in the West, but it doesn't fly in Islam's Middle East heartland. The harshest two suggest, one more strongly than the other, that Western intolerance of Islam is a much greater problem than Islamic intolerance. A warmer critic insists that stable democracy in Islamic nations must precede Islamic tolerance. Tariq Ali cogently argues that secular political change, not liberal theology, is what the Islamic world needs. Altogether the book is an excellent place to start grappling with the problems of contemporary Islam vis-a-vis the West, though its leftist orientation begs for good right-wing complementation: try Serge Trifkovic's Sword of Islam